A Stronger Easter
By Griff
Martin
On John 20:1-18
For
the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
On
Easter Sunday
April
21, 2019
He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed.
“We have seen what we thought was unseeable,” words
uttered by Shep Doelman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics just last week after capturing a historic image of a black hole in
our galaxy, Messier 87, some 55 million light-years away from us; an image that
has potential to drastically change everything we thought we knew about…well,
everything.
I think he is repeating the words the women spoke
the first Easter morning: “We have seen what we thought was unseeable”
proclaims Mary Magdalene. Which is quite a statement for her to make,
considering all she has already seen. Her very brother raised from the dead, a
religious leader who broke every tradition in the book to include making his
home in the non-traditional family space of Mary and Martha and Lazarus’ home,
prophetic words that took on the powers of the day, miracles that brought back
sight and motion, walking on water, making women and children and outcast part
of a movement, kissing lepers, turning water to wine and finally a death so
brutal her eyes still stung. What else is there left to see?
And yet, here she comes this Easter morning, out of
breath running to us (to those of us who were not brave enough to venture with
her to the tomb just yet), screaming with tears of joy coming down her cheeks,
“We have seen what we thought was unseeable.” What she has just seen
drastically changes everything we thought we knew about everything.
One word: Resurrection. Thanks be to God. He is
Risen. He is Risen indeed.
Happy Easter to you all. This is the day we
celebrate the greatest truth we know; this is the day that redefines reality as
we understand it; this is the day that says everything there is to say; this is
the day upon which every other day is now founded. This is the day that makes
every other day mean so much more and call forth so much more. Happy
Resurrection day, First Austin.
And nothing says Resurrection like a brief history
of beer and Prohibition in the United States (what, is this not what every
other baptist preacher is doing this morning?). I promise this is all about
Easter – please stick with me.
Prohibition began in 1920 as a nationwide ban on the
production, transportation and consumption of alcohol. It had everything to do
with a world that was full of political corruption all about power and money,
so combine that and a religious group that was getting all too pious (also
involving power and money). Now, I know it’s hard to imagine a world with
political fighting and corruptions on every side, all involving power and money
and a religious right, but just try with me.
Of course, this Prohibition does not really work. Prohibition
just pushes the production and transportation of alcohol underground to
criminal gangs and our prison system became overcrowded with people who had
been arrested. In 1933, 13 years after Prohibition began, President Roosevelt
began to repeal Prohibition with the Beer and Wine Revenue Act, a signature
promise of his campaign (obviously a very popular campaign). Now, this Beer and
Wine Revenue Act allowed beer and wine to be sold if they contained a 3.2
percent alcohol by weight.
And for a long time, that was the law of many states.
In fact, in this year Colorado, Kansas, Utah and Oklahoma have all changed that
law, making Minnesota the only state in the US with a 3.2 law still in place.
The question though, why 3.2? 3.2 was based on an
influential study, a popular study, that had little to no actual evidence to
support 3.2 as any sort of standard in terms of how it affects folks, citing
3.2 as a non-intoxicating beverage. The truth, however, is that the 3.2 number
is arbitrary and there is nothing magical about it, or scientific. Truly what
it did was give Americans very weak beers for a very long time. And that, of
course, brings us to Easter.
Because as a people we are willing to settle for
weaker versions of that which could liberate us all.
And I think we have fallen for a very weak Easter
story way too often, Easter 3.2.
We have fallen for a story of Easter that makes the
Resurrection a remembrance of one man in a very specific, certain time and
place being raised from the dead on behalf of us all, and we gather once a year
to celebrate the anniversary of that moment.
And I think that whole concept must just baffle
Jesus: ‘I did that, and it became this?’
It reminds me of a trip I took in high school to DC
for the inauguration. Of course, DC was packed, and everyone was trying to get
to the same events and places. We were in a huge chartered bus and we were on
our way to a firework display the night of the inauguration. Our bus driver got
us as close as she could, and then we all piled off the bus and stood there
until one of our chaperones realized she had left something on the bus, got
back on, and for some reason, we all followed her, everyone assuming that this
was exactly what we were supposed to do (off the bus… on the bus). And we then
sat on the bus for 1.5 hours until the bus driver got back on and was a bit
startled when she turned the lights on, and her bus was full. She had walked
down to the fireworks where we were supposed to go and then had headed back to
make sure the bus was warm and ready to go when we got back from seeing the
same fireworks. But we did not see them, we just sat on the bus.
Her face said it all: ‘I got you here, and you did
this?’ It’s the face of Jesus: “I did that, and it became this?” Easter is not
a commemorative anniversary for one man’s freedom. Easter is the continually
occurring event for all of us; it’s a new pattern that is for each of our
lives. It’s not a one-time event, but an ongoing reality in which we are
called to participate, to become and to do. Because God does not want folks
that celebrate Resurrection; God wants folks that experience and become and
bring about Resurrection.
Easter is more than a one-day remembrance.
It’s a fact we have long ignored as Western
Christians. The Eastern church has long understood this – just spend some time
comparing how Eastern and Western depict the Resurrection in art. Our paintings
come from the Western tradition known as the Individual Resurrection. They
always show Jesus emerging from the tomb alone with rays of light behind him as
if he is a Pro-wrestler entering the ring. Whereas Eastern tradition, the
earlier tradition known as the Universal Resurrection, always shows Jesus
coming up from the ground holding hands with others and continuing his life’s
work to bring life and love to all, making Resurrection a communal event in
which we are all invited to participate (look at the cover of your worship
guide this morning for an example of an Eastern Easter image).
And if you are thinking, “well, artists always have
poetic license,” which might just be another way of saying artists have and
hold the holy sacred gift of imagination (something our world needs), well then,
let’s turn to our Gospels.
Because our Scripture leans the same say, towards a
universal resurrection of Jesus. Listen to the words of Paul that were read
earlier (chronologically the first testimony we have of Resurrection): “If
there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ himself cannot have been
raised.” Paul argues that the resurrection and Jesus himself is true
because it’s happening all around us all the time. The Gospel of Matthew does
the same thing in a verse we tend to overlook: “The tombs were also opened. And
many bodies of those who had fallen asleep were raised up.” You don’t see a lot
of Easter paintings of that.
And theologically, as followers of Jesus, how could
we be called to crucifixion without resurrection? We are not; we are called to
both. The resurrection is humanity’s liberation from death – all past deaths,
all present deaths and all future deaths. It’s the final word spoken. “And when
from death we’re free, we will sing and joyful be."
We have fallen for a weaker Easter story, Easter
3.2. You look at our Easter and have to wonder if we are celebrating a
resuscitation of one man, or the resurrection of all. Actually, maybe this says
it better or more challenging: You look at your lives, our lives, my life and
does the way we live show that we celebrate the resuscitation of Jesus, or the
resurrection of all? Because the resuscitation of one man is a great miracle,
it’s not something to overlook, but the resurrection of all people calls me to
live differently. It gives a freedom that changes everything. In the words of
the Orthodox theologian Father Athenagoras, “The Resurrection is not the
resuscitation of the body, it is the beginning of the transformation of the
world.”
Because if it’s the resurrection of all people,
everything changes. The rules that we tend to follow are thrown out the window.
There is no question about the end; love wins. Death is not the final word.
Good conquers evil. Mercy and justice are victorious over violence and injustice.
Wounds will heal. Wrong will be made right. What is broken will be made whole.
What is divided will be restored. The lion and the lamb will lay down together.
Enemies become siblings. Borders are erased. Love is all. That is the Easter
reality, that is what resurrection for all people looks like.
And living in that reality is surely different than
living in the one we see around us each and every day. Where we live in fear of
speaking the truth to power, and caution to demanding more from this life, and
refuse to believe and behave as though we are truly beloved children of God….
Lives that don’t look like they truly believe resurrection is reality for all
of us.
It’s like this week: Monday night Jude had a
baseball game, and we went and sat where we always sit at the games. This week,
Bailey joined us for the game, and about halfway through the second inning he
said, “Hey Griff, you know we are sitting in the wrong stands, right? Everyone
around us is cheering for the other team.” That feeling is exactly how we
Easter people need to feel about living in the world: “hey, everyone around us
does not seem to be living the same story we are living.” Instead I fear we
often fall for the cheaper story, along with the rest of the world.
Which begs the question once again, have we fallen
for a weaker Easter story, Easter with 3.2 content? Why do we accept Easter as
a celebration of what has happened, instead of the celebration of what is
happening?
And isn’t Easter the event that we celebrate every
time we gather together? Because if it isn’t, then we are just wasting time.
Because I don’t know about you, but I know for me the last thing I need on my
calendar is one more event and thing. But what I do need is a time to gather
together with folks who remind me that we are living in a different story and
by different rules, and that I can’t let fear take over because the end has
already been written and the story is of love and life, not death and fear – that
resurrection is our reality. Because if I hear that every week, I will live
different every week, and so will you. Together then we will live our way into
the fullness of the Kingdom of God where God is in all and all are in God.
Easter is not a day that we stop and celebrate
something that happened long ago, Easter is everything we do, and we live.
Easter is our very being.
Easter is knowing that nothing can separate us from
God; Easter is knowing that we have nothing to fear because death has been
conquered; Easter is knowing that justice and equality will be victorious
because love wins; Easter is knowing that we are called to bring about the
reign of Christ to this earth through our own lives. And living those truths is
what it looks like to be Easter people.
Easter is our call to get off the bus.
Easter is our call to go beyond 3.2.
Easter is our call not to only to see the unseeable,
but after seeing the unseeable to go live a life that is unbelievable, because
nothing will hold us back as people of the resurrection who have nothing to
fear but everything to love and a world to resurrect together.
It goes back to one of our initial misunderstandings
of Easter, thinking of this word as a noun. But easter is not a noun, Easter is
a verb – a verb of transformation, action, calling and living.
Christ easters in us, so that we can easter into the
world.
And once we grasp that, we grasp everything. So, go
and Easter, because you are people of the Resurrection. Amen and Amen.
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